‘Too early to say’ whether Ukraine's summer offensive has failed, says head of US military
It is too early to say whether Ukraine’s summer offensive has failed, the head of the US military has said.
Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Gen Mark Milley said:
That offensive kicked off about 90 days ago. It has gone slower than the planners anticipated. But that is a difference between what Clausewitz called war on paper and real war.
So these are real people in real vehicles that are fighting through real minefields, and there’s real death and destruction, and there’s real friction. And there’s still a reasonable amount of time, probably about 30 to 45 days, worth of fighting weather left.
So the Ukrainians aren’t done. This battle is not done. They haven’t finished the fighting part of what they’re trying to accomplish. So we’ll see, it’s too early to say how this is going to end. They at least have achieved partial success in what they set out to do, and that’s important. And then the rains will come in. It’ll become very muddy.
It’ll be very difficult to manoeuvre at that point, and then you’ll get the deep winter. And then at that point, we’ll see where things go. But right now, it is way too early to say that this offensive has failed or not failed.
As the time approaches 8pm in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, here is a round-up of the day’s headlines from the war.
It is too early to say whether Ukraine’s summer offensive has failed, the head of the US military has said. Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Gen Mark Milley said: “That offensive kicked off about 90 days ago. It has gone slower than the planners anticipated. But that is a difference between what Clausewitz called war on paper and real war. So these are real people in real vehicles that are fighting through real minefields, and there’s real death and destruction, and there’s real friction. And there’s still a reasonable amount of time, probably about 30 to 45 days, worth of fighting weather left.”
Ukraine said air defence systems had destroyed 25 out of 32 Iran-made Shahed drones launched by Russia, mainly on Kyiv and the surrounding region. Reuters witnesses heard at least five blasts across Kyiv, and Ukrainian media footage showed a number of cars damaged. “Drones came onto the capital in groups and from different directions,” Serhiy Popko, the head of Kyiv’s city military administration, said on Telegram.
Russian air defence forces destroyed a Ukraine-launched drone over the Bryansk region on Sunday morning, the defence ministry said. The ministry’s statement on Telegram did not report any damage or casualties, Reuters reported. The Bryansk region in south-west Russia borders Ukraine.
Ukraine’s head of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, last night spoke at the Yalta European Strategy forum in Kyiv, which gathered Ukrainian and international policymakers to discuss the progress of the war. Budanov had this to say on Russia’s tactics: “In terms of creativity and flexibility, we still have an edge over them, they are rather outdated. But they are adapting, they are trying to change tactics, to alter the way they use forces, they miserably fail with their strategy, but their tactics do have some improvements.”
The G20 summit in Delhi ended on Sunday as India handed over the bloc’s presidency to Brazil, while both the US and Russia praised a consensus that did not condemn Moscow for the war in Ukraine but called on members to shun the use of force. The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, asked the group’s leaders to hold a virtual meeting in November to review progress on policy suggestions and goals announced at the weekend, Reuters reported. “It is our responsibility to look at the suggestions that have been made to see how progress can be accelerated,” he said in a statement.
Russia praised a G20 summit declaration that stopped short of directly criticising Moscow for the war in Ukraine and said the bloc’s leaders had acted in the interest of conflict resolution as deliberations headed into a second day on Sunday. The group adopted a consensus declaration in Delhi on Saturday that avoided condemning Russia for the war but called on all states not to use force to take territory. Ukraine earlier called it “nothing to be proud of”.
The White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has become the latest figure to praise the G20 summit declaration. The world’s biggest economies adopted a consensus declaration in Delhi on Saturday that avoided condemning Russia for the war, but highlighted the human suffering the conflict had caused and called on all states not to use force to grab territory.
Vladimir Putin can attend next year’s G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro without fear of arrest, the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has said as he took leadership of the forum. Speaking at this year’s meeting in Delhi, Lula – who has controversially tried to position himself as a peacemaker between Moscow and Kyiv – said the Russian president would be welcome to attend the November 2024 event. “What I can tell you is that, if I’m Brazil’s president, and if he comes to Brazil, there’s no reason he’ll be arrested,” the leftwinger told the Indian news group Firstpost.
Ukraine has blamed Russia for the deaths of two foreign aid workers who were reportedly killed in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, as Russian shelling hit a van carrying a team of four working with a Ukrainian NGO, while dozens of Russian drones targeted Kyiv and wounded at least one civilian.Road to Relief said Anthony Ihnat, a Canadian, died in the attack, along with Spanish aid worker EmmaIgual,who studied at the University of California at Berkeley.
Ruben Mawick, a German medical volunteer, and Johan Mathias Thyr, a Swedish volunteer, were seriously injured. The four volunteers were trapped inside the van as it flipped over and caught fire after being struck by shells near the town of Chasiv Yar, the organisation said on its Instagram page, according to AP.
The Romanian foreign ministry has called in the head of Russia’s mission in Bucharest to complain about the discovery of more fragments of a Russian drone thought to have been used in an attack on Ukraine. Romanian government minister Iulian Fota said he was unhappy about the apparent violation of Romania’s airspace. It is the second discovery of its kind in Romanian territory this week.
The South Korean president, Yoon Suk-yeol, said on Sunday that the country would provide an additional $2bn in aid to Ukraine starting in 2025, in addition to the $300m previously pledged for next year, Yonhap news reported. Yoon made the comment at a session of the G20 summit held in Delhi, India.
Russia will return to the Black Sea grain deal “the same day” as Moscow’s conditions for export of its own grain and fertilisers to the global markets are met, the country’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told reporters on Sunday. Russia quit the deal in July, a year after it was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, complaining that its own food and fertiliser exports faced obstacles and that insufficient Ukrainian grain was going to countries in need.
Ukraine’s newly nominated defence minister, Rustem Umerov, has called on Kyiv’s partners to increase deliveries of heavy weapons, amid a long and difficult counteroffensive against Russian forces. “We are grateful for all the support provided … we need more heavy weapons,” Umerov said in an embargoed speech released on Saturday.
Kyiv residents fear a property grab by developers, with the war not diminishing the appetite for prime property in the city, or halting the scramble to get hold of empty plots for construction. While developers seek to take advantage of Russia’s invasion, it has also spurred opposition to their plans.
The International Atomic Energy Agency warned of a potential threat to nuclear safety after a surge in fighting near the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The UN atomic watchdog said its experts at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant reported hearing explosions over the past week.
That’s all for today, thank you for following along.
Russia has begun reinforcing its military base on its border with Finland, according to satellite images posted by the Finnish news website Yle.
The images appear to show that Moscow has built new warehouses to store and service military vehicles, and equipment has gone up at the military depot in Petrozavodsk and the Alakurtti military base.
These are the first visible signs that Russia has begun investing in the readiness of its border bases near Finland after many years of inactivity, Yle reported. The Finnish defence minister, Antti Häkkänen, said they did not present an immediate threat to his country’s security.
The improvements may be connected to Russia’s intention to supply equipment to the Ukrainian front from the Petrozavodsk base. A retired Finnish major told Yle that a warehouse there looked as if it had been built for maintenance.
Ukraine has blamed Russian forces for the killing of two aid workers, one Canadian and one Spanish, in eastern Ukraine, calling their deaths near the city of Bakhmut “a painful, irreparable loss”, Agence France-Presse reports.
The defence ministry said Moscow’s troops had killed EmmaIgual, a Spanish citizen who studied at the University of California at Berkeley, and Anthony Ihnat, a Canadian citizen. Both worked for the NGO Road to Relief.
It said in their statement that two German citizens working for the aid group had been injured in the incident in the eastern Donetsk region.
The industrial region has seen the worst of the fighting of Russia’s invasion launched last February, and Moscow claimed to have annexed the territory last year.
Kyiv said the aid workers had dedicated themselves to limiting the harm to civilians caught in the conflict, including by carrying out evacuations and distributing humanitarian relief.
The battle for Bakhmut, which was captured by Russian forces in May, has been one of the bloodiest of the invasion with Ukrainian forces now pushing back along the northern and southern flanks of the town.
In February, the US medic Pete Reed, 33, was killed near Bakhmut when a missle hit his evacuation vehicle.
In May, the AFP video journalist Arman Soldin was killed by missile fire in Chasiv Yar near Bakhmut.
Romania’sforeign ministry has summoned the head of the Russian mission in the country to demand answers as to how debris from a Russian drone ended up in Romania.
Romanian government minister Iulian Fota said he was unhappy about the apparent violation of Romania’s airspace after finding the downed drone debris, found near its border with Ukraine.
A Bucharest government release said: “Fota firmly requested the Russian side to cease actions against the Ukrainian population and infrastructure, including those that would in any way threaten the safety and security of Romanian citizens in the region.”
The latest debris was discovered on Saturday. The find was days after parts were found following a Russian drone attack on the port of Izmail a week ago.
The US deputy secretary of state, Victoria Nuland, has said Washington is “impressed” by the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Speaking at the Yalta European Strategy annual meeting she said: “This counteroffensive has been kilometre by kilometre but we are impressed by the progress made, especially in the south.”
Nuland, who is the deputy to Antony Blinken, said Russia’s defences are the largest scale defences seen in 100 years. “We need to understand what Ukraine needs to clear these defences, and we cannot do that until Ukraine confronts the defences. We got a good sense of what was needed when we were here.”
She added: “If Ukraine does not win, if Putin succeeds, this type of evil will be normalised across the world. Ukraine stands on the right side of democracy and needs our support.”
Russian authorities have reported various attempts to sabotage voting in local elections taking place in occupied areas of Ukraine, AP reported.
Elections are taking place this weekend in 79 regions of Russia, with ballots for governors, regional legislatures, city and municipal councils, as well as in the four Ukrainian regions Moscow annexed last year – the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia provinces – and on the Crimean peninsula, which the Kremlin annexed in 2014.
Balloting in the occupied areas of Ukraine has been denounced by Kyiv and the west as a sham and a violation of international law.
Russian electoral officials reported attempts to sabotage voting in the occupied regions, where guerrilla forces loyal to Kyiv had previously killed pro-Moscow officials, blown up bridges and helped the Ukrainian military by identifying key targets.
It is too early to say whether Ukraine’s summer offensive has failed, the head of the US military has said. Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Gen Mark Milley said: “That offensive kicked off about 90 days ago. It has gone slower than the planners anticipated. But that is a difference between what Clausewitz called war on paper and real war. So these are real people in real vehicles that are fighting through real minefields, and there’s real death and destruction, and there’s real friction. And there’s still a reasonable amount of time, probably about 30 to 45 days, worth of fighting weather left.”
Ukraine said air defence systems had destroyed 25 out of 32 Iran-made Shahed drones launched by Russia, mainly on Kyiv and the surrounding region. Reuters witnesses heard at least five blasts across Kyiv, and Ukrainian media footage showed a number of cars damaged. “Drones came onto the capital in groups and from different directions,” Serhiy Popko, the head of Kyiv’s city military administration, said on Telegram.
Russian air defence forces destroyed a Ukraine-launched drone over the Bryansk region on Sunday morning, the defence ministry said. The ministry’s statement on Telegram did not report any damage or casualties, Reuters reported. The Bryansk region in south-west Russia borders Ukraine.
Ukraine’s head of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, last night spoke at the Yalta European Strategy forum in Kyiv, which gathered Ukrainian and international policymakers to discuss the progress of the war. Budanov had this to say on Russia’s tactics: “In terms of creativity and flexibility, we still have an edge over them, they are rather outdated. But they are adapting, they are trying to change tactics, to alter the way they use forces, they miserably fail with their strategy, but their tactics do have some improvements.”
The G20 summit in Delhi ended on Sunday as India handed over the bloc’s presidency to Brazil, while both the US and Russia praised a consensus that did not condemn Moscow for the war in Ukraine but called on members to shun the use of force. The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, asked the group’s leaders to hold a virtual meeting in November to review progress on policy suggestions and goals announced at the weekend, Reuters reported. “It is our responsibility to look at the suggestions that have been made to see how progress can be accelerated,” he said in a statement.
Russia praised a G20 summit declaration that stopped short of directly criticising Moscow for the war in Ukraine and said the bloc’s leaders had acted in the interest of conflict resolution as deliberations headed into a second day on Sunday. The group adopted a consensus declaration in Delhi on Saturday that avoided condemning Russia for the war but called on all states not to use force to take territory. Ukraine earlier called it “nothing to be proud of”.
The White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has become the latest figure to praise the G20 summit declaration. The world’s biggest economies adopted a consensus declaration in Delhi on Saturday that avoided condemning Russia for the war, but highlighted the human suffering the conflict had caused and called on all states not to use force to grab territory.
Vladimir Putin can attend next year’s G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro without fear of arrest, the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has said as he took leadership of the forum. Speaking at this year’s meeting in Delhi, Lula – who has controversially tried to position himself as a peacemaker between Moscow and Kyiv – said the Russian president would be welcome to attend the November 2024 event. “What I can tell you is that, if I’m Brazil’s president, and if he comes to Brazil, there’s no reason he’ll be arrested,” the leftwinger told the Indian news group Firstpost.
Two foreign aid workers were reportedly killed in eastern Ukraine on Sunday as Russian shelling hit a van carrying a team of four working with a Ukrainian NGO, while dozens of Russian drones targeted Kyiv and wounded at least one civilian. The four volunteers from the Road to Relief NGO, which helps evacuate wounded people from frontline areas, were trapped inside the van as it flipped over and caught fire after being struck by shells near the town of Chasiv Yar, the organisation said on its Instagram page, according to AP. Road to Relief said Anthony Ihnat, a Canadian, died in the attack, while Ruben Mawick, a German medical volunteer, and Johan Mathias Thyr, a Swedish volunteer, were seriously injured.
A Spanish aid worker was killed when a missile hit the vehicle in which she was travelling in Ukraine, the Spanish foreign minister, Jose Manuel Albares, said on Sunday. “Unfortunately, I can confirm a missile hit a vehicle in which this Spanish worker was travelling who was working for a humanitarian NGO in Ukraine. We have verbal confirmation of her death,” Albares told reporters in India, where he attended the G20 meeting.
The South Korean president, Yoon Suk-yeol, said on Sunday that the country would provide an additional $2bn in aid to Ukraine starting in 2025, in addition to the $300m previously pledged for next year, Yonhap news reported. Yoon made the comment at a session of the G20 summit held in Delhi, India.
Russia will return to the Black Sea grain deal “the same day” as Moscow’s conditions for export of its own grain and fertilisers to the global markets are met, the country’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told reporters on Sunday. Russia quit the deal in July, a year after it was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, complaining that its own food and fertiliser exports faced obstacles and that insufficient Ukrainian grain was going to countries in need.
Ukraine’s newly nominated defence minister, Rustem Umerov, has called on Kyiv’s partners to increase deliveries of heavy weapons, amid a long and difficult counteroffensive against Russian forces. “We are grateful for all the support provided … we need more heavy weapons,” Umerov said in an embargoed speech released on Saturday.
Kyiv residents fear a property grab by developers, with the war not diminishing the appetite for prime property in the city, or halting the scramble to get hold of empty plots for construction. While developers seek to take advantage of Russia’s invasion, it has also spurred opposition to their plans.
New fragments of a drone similar to those used by the Russian military were found on Romanian soil, the president and defence ministry said on Saturday – the second discovery of its kind in Romanian territory this week.
The International Atomic Energy Agency warned of a potential threat to nuclear safety after a surge in fighting near the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The UN atomic watchdog said its experts at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant reported hearing explosions over the past week.
Vladimir Putin can attend next year’s G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro without fear of arrest, the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has said as he took leadership of the forum.
Speaking at this year’s meeting in Delhi, Lula – who has controversially tried to position himself as a peacemaker between Moscow and Kyiv – said the Russian president would be welcome to attend the November 2024 event.
“What I can tell you is that, if I’m Brazil’s president, and if he comes to Brazil, there’s no reason he’ll be arrested,” the leftwinger told the Indian news group Firstpost.
The international criminal court (ICC) issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest for alleged war crimes in March 2023, just over a year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As a signatory of the Rome statute, Brazil is required to cooperate with ICC investigations and activities, which legal experts say includes arresting the court’s targets. Putin skipped last month’s Brics summit in South Africa, a decision widely attributed to the fact that it has signed up to the same charter.
Lula, however, indicated Putin would be welcome at the Rio summit, where he said visitors would find “an atmosphere of peace”. Challenged over the fact that Brazil was a signatory to the ICC charter, Lula replied: “He won’t be arrested.”
Russia will return to the Black Sea grain deal “the same day” as Moscow’s conditions for export of its own grain and fertilisers to the global markets are met, the country’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told reporters on Sunday.
Russia quit the deal in July, a year after it was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, complaining that its own food and fertiliser exports faced obstacles and that insufficient Ukrainian grain was going to countries in need.
“When all the necessary actions for removing obstacles for our grain and fertiliser exports are implemented, the same day we will return to the collective implementation of the Ukrainian part of the Black Sea initiative”, Lavrov told a briefing after attending the two-day G20 summit in Delhi.
The G20 declaration on Saturday called for ‘full, timely and effective implementation to ensure the immediate and unimpeded deliveries of grain, foodstuffs, and fertilisers/inputs’ from Russia and Ukraine to meet demand in developing countries”.
The G20 summit in Delhi ended on Sunday as India handed over the bloc’s presidency to Brazil, while both the US and Russia praised a consensus that did not condemn Moscow for the war in Ukraine but called on members to shun the use of force.
The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, asked the group’s leaders to hold a virtual meeting in November to review progress on policy suggestions and goals announced at the weekend, Reuters reported.
“It is our responsibility to look at the suggestions that have been made to see how progress can be accelerated,” he said in a statement.
The group adopted a declaration on Saturday that avoided condemning Russia for the war but highlighted the human suffering the conflict had caused and called on all states not to use force to grab territory.
The consensus came as a surprise. In the weeks leading to the summit, sharply differing views on the war had threatened to derail the meeting, with western nations demanding members call out Moscow for the invasion and Russia saying it would block any resolution that did not reflect its position.
The country’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, the head of the Russian delegation, said the summit had been a success for India and the world’s developing countries.
Two foreign aid workers reportedly killed in eastern Ukraine after Russian shelling hit van
Two foreign aid workers were reportedly killed in eastern Ukraine on Sunday as Russian shelling hit a van carrying a team of four working with a Ukrainian NGO, while dozens of Russian drones targeted Kyiv and wounded at least one civilian.
The four volunteers from the Road to Relief NGO, which helps evacuate wounded people from front-line areas, were trapped inside the van as it flipped over and caught fire after being struck by shells near the town of Chasiv Yar, the organisation said on its Instagram page, AP reported.
Road to Relief said Anthony Ihnat, a Canadian, died in the attack, while Ruben Mawick, a German medical volunteer, and Johan Mathias Thyr, a Swedish volunteer, were seriously injured.
Road to Relief added that it could not trace the whereabouts of the van’s fourth passenger, Emma Igual, a Spanish national who was the organisation’s director. Hours later, Spain’s acting foreign minister, Jose Manuel Albares, told Spanish media that authorities in Madrid had received “verbal confirmation” of the 32-year-old Igual’s death.
The volunteers were on their way to assess the needs of civilians on the outskirts of Bakhmut, Road to Relief said, in reference to the eastern town that was the scene of the war’s longest and bloodiest battle before falling to Moscow in May. Ukrainian forces have held on to Bakhmut’s western suburbs and are pushing a counteroffensive in the area.
